Now, I'm not talking about the JP that we brought with us to max level because we were already capped on our mains, or the JP that some people earn by dungeon leveling. It's obvious what those are for: picking up a piece or two of gear to get us into heroics if we screw up and disenchant too many poorly-itemized quest rewards (points finger at self). Now, that's a narrow niche, but it's somewhat useful.

What I'm talking about are the JP we earn at max level. What are they for?

There's one thing they're clearly not for: getting into heroics. Suppose you get to max level with only a nominal amount of JP (you're a new character leveled mostly by questing). You can't hit the 440 item level threshold (you lost some of your quest gear, let's say) and can't afford the AH prices for crafted gear. You'd like to replace a slot or two with JP gear.

The only way to earn JP at max level, if you can't get into heroics, is scenarios: 30 JP per scenario. At roughly 15 minutes per scenario, that's 2 JP/minute. The cheapest JP items are 1250 JP, so it would take you 625 minutes, or 10 and a half hours, of just straight grinding scenarios just to buy one JP item. That's not counting any queue times. Not only is that completely unrealistic, it's probably the worst conceivable time investment in the game. You could buy 4 or 5 equivalent Honor items in that time. Obviously, JP cannot possibly be designed to get new 90s into heroics...or if it is, it's designed to be drastically inferior to Honor for that purpose.

So, assume you can get into heroics. Then the primary source of JP is running heroics. That's actually not that terrible a source, especially considering you're also getting chances at gear drops. But once you're at that point, what are they for?

They're not for making heroics easier. The only way the heroics could be easier (excluding of course the trash at the end of SPM) is if the bosses just killed themselves when you walked in the room. You don't need JP gear to run heroics. So what do you need it for?

Prior to this hotfix, JP could have had a purpose: to be converted to Honor. But now both the Honor and the JP gear are sitting 5 item levels below the minimum gear requirement for the first LFR instance. If you want to raid LFR with slots filled in with JP gear, you also need to get raid or valor gear to compensate. But if your gear isn't good enough to run LFR, why is it good enough to run normal raids? And if you need valor gear first before JP gear is useful, doesn't that entirely defeat the purpose of JP being the easy/accessible 'farmable' currency?

No one seems to have mentioned it in this thread, or perhaps I missed it during my read through, but the threshold to enter Heroic dungeons has been reduced to 435 from 440. That should make it a bit easier to get into Heroics and start earning your Justice points at level cap.

No one seems to have mentioned it in this thread, or perhaps I missed it during my read through, but the threshold to enter Heroic dungeons has been reduced to 435 from 440. That should make it a bit easier to get into Heroics and start earning your Justice points at level cap.

It doesn't really help, since getting into heroics wasn't really the problem I don't think. Getting pre-raid geared was a bigger problem, due to the intense amount of rng involved since your only gearing choice is rng.

If you can't get a drop? Well you need to keep running it over and over -- which you can't even easily do since you can only specific-queue once per day, so you have to rely on a random queue giving you the right dungeon, so maybe you have 2 shots a day.

The LFR ilvl seems to be a more contentious issue than the LFD ilvl, in other words. The crafted pvp set and some questing gear was pretty much enough to queue for heroics before (and still is).

LFR seems to me to be the main issue.

Perhaps I did misunderstand the intention of the thread! I'll do some digging, and see if I can't bring something more useful to the discussion.

There is literally no point in JP or JP gear once you are already running heroics.

I think that might be misrepresenting the situation a bit. Even if Justice Gear isn't at the same level as Heroic gear, it will still raise your average item level and help shore up your Heroic and Valor gear to potentially get you into normal raiding and LFR faster.

What are you and what are we getting out of having a currency obtained from heroics give out loot that is useless to heroics?

I think that Justice Points are perhaps more of a stepping stone than they once were. They were originally added for those situations where RNG turns against you, and you haven't obtained a drop for a particular slot. Even if you didn't get the gear over successive runs, at least you have some Justice Points to help fill in the gaps in the meantime. They are returning to that intent more than being an alternative method of accruing Heroic level gear.

After you obtain your Heroic gear, it's true that Justice Points won't be as useful. Obviously, they can be turned over for Honor, and at some point in the future we may add trade materials or Heirlooms to the quartermasters.

I think that Justice Points are perhaps more of a stepping stone than they once were. They were originally added for those situations where RNG turns against you, and you haven't obtained a drop for a particular slot. Even if you didn't get the gear over successive runs, at least you have some Justice Points to help fill in the gaps in the meantime. They are returning to that intent more than being an alternative method of accruing Heroic level gear.

After you obtain your Heroic gear, it's true that Justice Points won't be as useful. Obviously, it can be turned over for Honor, and at some point in the future we may add trade materials or Heirlooms to the quartermasters.

If every single piece isnt 463 you dont get to do LFR

Please consider reducing LFR to 458 to match up with justice.

That's part of the reason why I mentioned Valor Points in a previous post. Item level 489 Valor pieces will certainly help bring your average item level up. Some of those pieces are now available at Honored reputation with Mists of Pandaria factions.

That's part of the reason why I mentioned Valor Points in a previous post. Item level 489 Valor pieces will certainly help bring your average item level up. Some of those pieces are now available at Honored reputation with Mists of Pandaria factions.

Also - Didn't you remove head enchants because you didn't like forcing people to grind a reputation so they could raid?

Suggesting that for people to get their ilvl high enough to get in to LFR they should go and grind a rep so they can purchase a VP item is basically the same thing.

We're not opposed to making earning some reputation compelling. You'll recall that a lot of those items were only available at very high reputation levels though, whereas the Valor Items I was referring to become available at Honored.

We're not opposed to making earning some reputation compelling. You'll recall that a lot of those items were only available at very high reputation levels though, whereas the Valor Items I was referring to become available at Honored.

Yes, but a majority of valor gear only becomes available at revered for various factions.

Granted. You won't need all of those pieces to progress into raiding or LFR though. Hopefully, as you continue to do dailies (assuming they're something you want to do, that is), you'll gain enough reputation to allow you to pick up the occasional Revered level Valor piece to supplement your raiding set.

By the way, I don't want any of you to feel as though your feedback is falling on deaf ears. I'll make sure that your perspectives are shared with the development team. On the same token, I want to emphasize that Justice Points aren't useless, even if they don't fulfill the same role that we've grown accustomed to.

I bet this came about from one of the meetings where you get input from the other blizzard teams. Seems like this cross team strategy is working out well.

Sarcasm aside, Blizzard always operates in a spirit of cooperation.

I'm sure that many of you recall the days before Valor and Justice. You'll recall that before there were points there were badges. Before that, there was nothing. Many of us remember the days when you could spend upwards of an hour in a single dungeon, and come away from it without a single drop: not a even an Uncommon. We try new things. A lot of the time they work well. We're not always right, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes what ultimately ends up being a good change for the overall World of Warcraft experience doesn't seem so great at first: there was a significant segment of the player base that railed heavily against the idea of purchasable dungeon quality gear, let alone raid quality gear, period.

We've come a long way since then, and we'll see where this shakes out together. Again, your feedback is an important part of that.

Moreover it further makes the case that once you've done "enough" dungeons to be kitted out with, say, 70% 363 gear, and have earned enough justice to buy some stopgaps, there is little incentive to keep running the dungeons.

In reality, that's no different from how Justice worked before, except the process would occur faster then. In the early days of Cataclysm, for example, between dungeon drops and Justice Point gear, active tanks (and to a lesser extent healers) very rapidly loaded up on all the tanking gear they could carry, filled out dps sets, loaded up on Heirlooms, then walked away from dungeons without looking back.

The current system is okay--it's heavily gated, to slow us down, and I get that. I do wish that reputations, as a result, were account-wide, because for the rest of my alts I'll spend the rest of my life doing dailies, and that is just...buh.

Just as a side note, since it's off topic for this thread, but we're actually working on a system that will make gaining reputations on your alternate characters a bit easier. More details on that will be coming soon.

I don't actually believe so. I think he was pointing out that there may have been more Blue posts than people had been aware of. I went and looked, and it certainly looked like some of them were relevant to the issue here.

We're currently looking into reducing the item level requirement for Mogu'Shan Vaults LFR from 463 to 460. This should mean that more players will be ready to go once LFR is rolled out, but their gear should still be at an appropriate level for the fights.

I know that many of you have expressed concerns regarding the item level required to do LFR. This change will also help make Justice Point gear a bit more relevant for meeting the required item level.